And if I fall and crash and burn
by quotegilikay
Summary: A collection of moments from the show. Should be updated about once a week if I keep up with my work. No slash- could potentially be pre-slash if you squint.
1. Breathe

**A/N-** I know there are tons of 'moments' stories like this out there, but I wanted to do this anyway.

And I don't own anything. Always forget to say that.

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Chapter 1- Breathe

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_Deserts and jungles. Gunshots. Someone's down. Better run or it'll be you next. Running frantically, blindly, through agony and exhaustion and desperation. Running for sandbags and safety in the middle of a warzone. Someone gets hit next to you, and it's close, so close…_

And John Watson wakes up.

Eyes snapping open. Body jerking into a sitting position. Arms behind him. Sheets tangled around his hips.

Deep shaky breaths. Trying to force the hysteria back down his throat. Deep breaths, clench your teeth, breathe through your nose and don't think about anything other than your breathing. It's routine by now, he knows what to do to stop it but that doesn't make it any easier and it hurts in his chest and his shoulder is burning, his heart is pounding like he's back in the battlefield and he needs to calm down or he'll break with the strain of it…

Thoughts run through his mind, mingling with memories of the war and eventually swallowing them and yanking him out of the blind moment of terror that comes with waking up from a nightmare that was so very _real._ And then he falls back onto his pillow and chokes back a sob, because he feels so damn _useless _and _dammit _he misses the action and he wishes more than anything that something, _anything, _would happen to him. He hates missing the war because he's not _meant to, _not meant to enjoy the adrenaline and the chaos and the never-knowing-what's-going-to-happen. But he does, because he's in his element, and he knows exactly what he's supposed to do and it's simple but so complicated at the same time, and it makes him hate. The man who shot him; the soldiers who died before he could save them; his country, who sent him to war; the Commanding Officer who sent him home again. And most of all, it makes him hate himself for being so _broken, _getting shot and coming home with a limp he knows is psychosomatic but can't help all the same and a head full of memories that haunt him every night.

And he hates the nightmares, because they make him feel weak and you can't be weak if you're a soldier. But they still come, no matter how much he tries to lock them away and move on with his life, they still come and threaten to drown him in the night until he doesn't want to sleep anymore because of what he will wake up to.

And so he breathes. In and out, in and out, surviving each second as it comes and not worrying about anything else. Grasping at the few fragile threads that hold him to reality and sanity and not letting go because if he did he'd fall into the tangled mess of madness and PTSD and he can't let that happen. Heavy breaths like he's trying to push the air out of his nose because it calms him, lets him focus his energy on something that's real and solid and simple.

Because that's all you can do. Breathe and try to get through it.

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**A/N2- **If you have a moment you'd like me to do, leave a review and tell me!


	2. Hated

**A/N-** Not entirely happy with this one. But I really wanted to write this scene.

I wish I owned a Sherlock, and a John as well, but sadly I don't.

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Chapter 2- Hated

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'_We all hated him'_

Sherlock tried not to let it show, but that hurt. So he just inclined his head slightly and looked down briefly, hoping no-one saw the upset expression that flashed across his face.

He didn't want to be hated.

He never had. He couldn't exactly say it wasn't his fault, but he couldn't help the way his mind worked. He couldn't help what he saw that no one else did.

But he had tried, at first, to be a little more… tolerable, maybe even agreeable. To curb his deductions, and keep them to himself, try not to be too much of, as one of his eleventh-grade teachers had infamously called him, a cocky, big-headed, show-off. It was hard, but he'd regarded it as a sort of experiment, and _tried_.

Then about half way through his time at uni, he'd given up. He'd only have to be around these… pretentious _prats _for another few years, and then he'd be out of there, never to see most of them again. He'd meet a whole bunch of new people, and he could start all over again with them, if he wanted to.

Or not. Because it's not like he'd ever really cared what people thought about him anyway. He'd never really had any friends, through primary school, or high school, and now university, because not only had he not found anyone worthy (no matter how pretentious that made he himself sound) of the title, but he didn't feel the need. He'd never seen why it was so necessary for people to have another person to tell things to and share things with, and then have to listen to them in return.

And so he hadn't bothered. But at the start of his term and university, he had been living in dorm-style quarters with a bunch of other young men his age. And he'd experienced first-hand how rather awful boarding school could be if you didn't have at least one person on your side. So he'd tried for a year or so, really tried, to make friends with and get to know the boys in his dorm. It was at times more than a little tedious, but altogether not bad. At least he didn't get bullied quite as much.

That was one advantage of a friend, he supposed. Someone who would support you no matter what.

Like Mycroft had. Mycroft had always been there for him, through the dark days of his early twenties, and the subsequent unemployment, apartment-shuffling and general bad tempers that followed. So Sherlock supposed that maybe Mycroft was a friend. But he was his brother, so it didn't count. He had to be.

Mycroft had always taught him, and so therefore he had always believed, that caring was a weakness. He could certainly see now why caring was such a disadvantage, if caring about someone made him hurt this much. But why was the opinion of this man, this man who had virtually no bearing on Sherlock's life and hadn't for a number of years, so important to him?

Why did he even care?

That was why it hurt so much when John corrected his (apparently a little too liberal) usage of the word _friend. _Because he knew he cared about John. It was illogical, given that he'd basically only just met the man, but John seemed to understand him, and accept all his little quirks (although John would probably be inclined to use a somewhat stronger word for it) and strange habits. But altogether, he had come to consider John Watson a friend. And a proper friend, not a pseudo-friend like the ones he'd had at university.

But apparently John didn't feel the same way. And Sherlock didn't understand why. It frustrated him, irked him to the absolute nth degree, but he simply did not know why John didn't consider Sherlock in the same way that Sherlock considered John. He didn't know what it meant, what it might turn into.

He didn't want John to hate him too.

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**A/N2-** Yeah. Like I said before, there's something about this one that I'm not completely happy with. It's sort of jumpy.

Anyways. Review?


	3. Oh God yes

**A/N- **So sorry it's been so long updating this! I haven't been working enough… ugh. But here's a chapter now, and I've got another one that I've practically finished so I'll put that up tomorrow (promise!)

Still don't own anything. Working on it though.

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Chapter 3- Oh God yes

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_You've seen some trouble then._

You could say that, John thought. Trouble meant difficulty and something to be avoided, but John liked the trouble. To him it meant being in his element, knowing with an absolute certainty what you have to do even when everything around you was chaos because that was why he was there, to save lives and heal people in an ocean of pain and injury. To him it meant clarity and his hands not shaking, and even though he hadn't exactly enjoyed being shot, he did enjoy the adrenaline. Although _enjoy_ probably wasn't the right word. Enjoy implied taking satisfaction in something, and there was certainly no satisfaction in seeing your fellow soldiers and _friends _being gunned down only feet away from you. There was definitely something morbid and just plain _wrong _with someone who said they enjoyed that. Maybe a better word was _need. _It was like a drug that he was addicted to, the rush that came from risking your life every day from every direction.

But he couldn't say that.

_Yes. Enough for a lifetime. Far too much._

He didn't really believe that. He only said it because he had to. A soldier was not supposed to miss the war, because war meant pain and loss and running blindly for your life and not being able to sleep when you got home. John knew that, and he also knew that he couldn't tell this man who he'd only just met that he wanted to get out of the dull boring confines of everyday ordinary London life and back to risking his life every day because it made him feel _alive, _because that wasn't normal, and no matter how un-normal this too-skinny and ridiculously tall man had proven himself to be so far, it could mean counselling and pills and medication and John didn't want that. So he parroted back what he knew he was supposed to say, even though he could hear in his own voice that he didn't really believe that.

And he could read on Sherlock's face that he didn't believe it either.

_Want to see some more?_

The man's eyes twinkled with a kind of dark adventure, and John thought maybe Sherlock was more like him than he'd first thought. Maybe he was a soldier too, not an Army soldier but a man who's daily life meant risking it and who was in his element never knowing what was going to happen. Maybe Sherlock could help John could find the adrenaline again, the adrenaline that made life exciting and pulled him out of the mundane and ordinary that was so hard to come back to.

And so he opened his mouth to give an answer that he knew he'd never regret.

_Oh God yes._

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**A/N2- **I thought there was a lot to be said about this scene. This is the way I read it.

Thoughts?


	4. Typical

**A/N- **Told you I'd post again soon! Here's number 4.

I wouldn't mind owning this Sherlock. But I don't.

Oh, and there's an 'important notice' at the end.

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Chapter 4- Typical

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John was wondering how a man managed to look so… _dignified _– that was the word he was looking for- while standing in the middle of Buckingham Palace wearing nothing but a sheet around his shoulders.

That was so typical Sherlock though, John thought. Sherlock was the man who had _invented himself a career. _He had made up a job that suited him because none of the others did. He was obstinate and stubborn and always in control and could turn any situation around to meet his own ends.

So it only followed that he would feel comfortable standing in one of the most famous and important buildings in the world, let alone the country, with the only thing preventing him from being fully naked a bedsheet barely clutched around his waist, and still in total control of the situation even after his older brother had stepped on said sheet and he'd nearly dropped it.

And John had looked. Not openly, hadn't made it obvious of course, but he'd looked alright. It was sort of hard not to, given the total idiocy of the whole situation. He'd seen Sherlock without a shirt before- that was only natural when you lived with a man who had the world's worst idea of privacy and absolutely zero concept of personal space- and even though he was used to it by now, he still found himself glancing at his flatmate every time it happened. He was in surprisingly good shape for a man who considered his body mere 'transport'- lean, wiry muscles, long bones and not much else- although this was a man who frequently went days on end without eating. He was lanky and angular and would have looked uncoordinated, were it not for the absolute grace with which he held himself and the almost elegance with which he moved.

John wasn't in bad shape himself, but he was much shorter and stockier than Sherlock and could never hope to achieve the same litheness. He always had been- even when he was a teenager he'd never gone through the awkward stage most boys go through where they had a sudden growth spurt and then didn't know what they were supposed to do with their limbs. He'd always been more powerfully built than most of his friends- it was part of what had made him a good footballer and, later, a good soldier.

He liked to be in control as well- another thing that made him a good soldier, particularly when it came to being a captain- but not like Sherlock did. John liked it because it made things easier, but with Sherlock it was like he needed it, craved it, and threw a tantrum if he didn't get it. And Sherlock could pull that off- he had such a commanding presence and he was so bloody tall, and then there was that look he gave, the 'I am surrounded by idiots' one, that made people want to listen to him, even if they didn't know it. If John ever tried to throw a tantrum, he would have looked utterly ridiculous because he was so… _ordinary, _but Sherlock was so the opposite of ordinary that he could get away with it. He was constantly ups and downs, highs and lows, one extreme to the next. He could pull off being such a tenacious prat because the only thing people expected of Sherlock was to be surprised, and even if something went wrong he had that incredible and unique ability to come out on top every time anyway.

So maybe his naked dignity wasn't so unpredicted. John figured that maybe he shouldn't be so surprised. It was Sherlock Holmes, after all.

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**A/N2- **Well, that didn't exactly go where I wanted it to. Oh well. Turned out OK.

Right. Important notice. I've got exams over the next two weeks, so I probably won't be able to post anything until about the 11th of August, and that's provided I survive exams in the first place…

Have a good two weeks!


	5. Bit not good

**A/N- **I AM SO SORRY. It's been almost a month since I said that I'd be able to update again but I haven't because we got all our exams back and it was more than a little depressing and then I didn't feel like writing so I figured that it was better to wait until I'd written something decent than post something crappy… aaand that was like the longest and worst sentence in the world. Sorry.

But the main gist of it is that I'm back now. Hopefully.

Thanks to effywho who reviewed the last chapter and I'm so sorry again that I've been so slack... I'll get better. Promise. :)

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Chapter 5- Bit not good

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_Not good?_

John was somewhat taken aback at that. It gave him a bit of a jolt when this man, this man he'd only known for a matter of hours, turned to him for moral advice. Aligned his moral compass with John's North, even though he clearly wasn't an idiot and thus had probably worked out by now that John's North was sometimes more than a little off.

He was a little shocked at the extent of Sherlock's complete lack of understanding and empathy, but John wasn't a complete idiot either, so he'd sort of expected it, and besides, that wasn't the issue here. Sherlock had known all the other people in the room for much longer than John (three years, at least, in the case of Lestrade, as he'd just found out from Angelo), and yet he'd still looked to a man who he'd only just met to tell him right from wrong.

Granted, John was the only one in the room who was on 'Sherlock's side', given that everyone else was there to try and prove him a murderer or a drug dealer or something that John wasn't quite sure of because he was sort of confused and trying to get his breath back and didn't really know what was happening at this point. So maybe it was natural that the consulting detective should consult him when everybody else was against him.

But even so, it meant that either Sherlock was a little bit stupid, or very quick to judge. And as John had already figured out, Sherlock was far from stupid. Thus, he must have been at least relatively confident with the speed and accuracy at which he judged people (which, going by his profession, was maybe not a surprise). Because really, John could have been anything, for all Sherlock knew. Anyone. He could have been a child-murderer, or an assassin, or a terrorist with a bomb in his shoe who was planning to blow up the entirety of Central London.

Although that wasn't really that likely.

But still. He was a soldier. He'd killed people. Yeah, he was first and foremost a doctor, and he was fairly certain he could be considered at least a relatively good person, but he was also an Army Captain who missed the war and that could probably be interpreted as a little dangerous.

Not that he minded though. Because right now, somethingwas actually happening to him. Someone was asking him things, treating him like an actual human being, and not some fragile PTSD-ruled shell that was about to either explode or crack into a million pieces at any moment. _Something was happening_, and if that meant illegally examining murder victims or answering strange questions from slightly odd men with cheekbones and turned-up collars, well, so be it.

So he gave his answer.

_A bit not good, yeah._

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**A/N2- **So I have another one that's pretty much ready to go, and I WILL POST THAT IN THE NEXT WEEK. I swear.

Also, if you guys have any suggestions, drop me a review or a PM and let me know!

And speaking of suggestions, I'm sort of struggling with ideas for my English creative. So if anyone knows of anything I could write for Romanticism…


	6. Not a date

**-Not a date—**

**A/N- **Sorry doesn't even begin to cover it this time, does it? But I'll say it anyway- sorry!

But I've finished school now! Only a month of exams left in a couple of weeks, and then I'm done! So that's exciting. We had like ten various leaving dinners and breakfasts and assemblies and chapel services and dances and God only knows what else, and now I'm back at home again and I have to put my uni preferences in in a few days which is somewhat stressful.

But anyways. You probably don't really want to read about my dilemmas. I'm only making excuses.

So here's another chapter. This one's a bit more fluffy. It was fun to write :)

Thanks to everyone who reviewed the last chapter and as always, I don't own anything.

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Chapter 6- Not a Date

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It would be easy to make that assumption. John can see that. To think that Sherlock and John are on a date. That they're 'together'.

Because really, when two people walk into a crowded, cosy little restaurant at night and take a table together, what else is one supposed to think? It's a natural deductive leap to make, thinking the two men are a couple. John has never met this Angelo, so Angelo has no way of knowing that John is one-hundred-percent straight, and going by his own (albeit limited) knowledge of Sherlock, not many people really know that much about the man, so for all John and probably Angelo know, Sherlock could be straight or gay or bi or something else entirely.

So it isn't an unreasonable thing to assume. It's maybe going a little too far when Angelo insists on bringing a candle to the table because 'it's more romantic', but Sherlock seems totally unconcerned and John gives up after a couple of _it's not a date_sbecause at this point he's got other things on his mind.

And so John eats his pasta (very good, just by the way, cheese and mushroom and something else that may have been spinach in the ravioli, with a cheesy-carbonara sort of sauce) and Sherlock stares out the window and they don't talk because Sherlock's looking for a murderer who'll come because he's a genius and wants to be noticed or something absurd. And then John breaks the silence and they do talk a bit, about friends and enemies and relationships. John talks himself into a corner by telling Sherlock he was unattached like himself and that was good (_why, John, why would you say that)_, and then Sherlock jumps to conclusions as well and it's sufficiently awkward for a while.

Because John is straight. Not homophobic, in any way- like he said to Sherlock _it's all fine_- but he's straight. He had girlfriends through secondary school and uni and before he went away to war, and sometimes he and Harry would sit in bars together before her alcoholism got too bad and rate the girls there, even though that was more than a bit strange at first, but John had gotten used to it and they'd had a laugh. So no, John Watson is not gay.

Even though John would have to be blind to not notice that his new flatmate is not half-bad-looking. He certainly cuts a mysterious figure, if nothing else, what with his piercing x-ray eyes and his cheekbones and his dark dramatic curls…

And then Sherlock meets his eyes, across the too-small table in the crowded little restaurant, and John can see again why people would get the wrong impression, because it's an intense look, magnetic, held for just a second too long, and it's a little bit guarded but it's filled with a thousand things at once and John doesn't know quite what he's just jumped into but he knows it's good. He might be in a little over his head at the moment, but he senses that he needs it, and he holds Sherlock's gaze and his breath catches in his throat and maybe the world stops for a moment.

But it's not a date. Really, it's not.

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**A/N2- **The ending of this was sort of hard to write because I'd written it as a smile BUT SHERLOCK DOESN'T FREAKING SMILE IN THIS SCENE


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